SNAPPERGPS: Open hardware for energy-efficient, low-cost wildlife location tracking with snapshot GNSS

Beuchert, Jonas, Matthes, Amanda and Rogers, Alex 2023. SNAPPERGPS: Open hardware for energy-efficient, low-cost wildlife location tracking with snapshot GNSS. Journal of Open Hardware 7 (1) 10.5334/joh.48

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Abstract

Location tracking with global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), such as GPS, is used in many applications, including the tracking of wild animals for research. Snapshot GNSS is a technique that only requires milliseconds of satellite signals to infer the position of a receiver. This is ideal for low-power applications such as animal tracking. However, there are few existing snapshot systems, none of which is open source. To address this, we developed SNAPPERGPS, a fully open-source, low-cost, and low-power location tracking system designed for wildlife tracking. SNAPPERGPS comprises three parts, all of which are open-source: (i) a small, low-cost, and low-power receiver; (ii) a web application to configure the receiver via USB; and (iii) a cloud-based platform for processing recorded data. This paper presents the hardware side of this project. The total component cost of the receiver is under $30, making it feasible for field work with restricted budgets and low recovery rates. The receiver records very short and low-resolution samples resulting in particularly low power consumption, outperforming existing systems. It can run for more than a year on a 40 mAh battery. We evaluated SNAPPERGPS in controlled static and dynamic tests in a semi-urban environment where it achieved median errors of 12 m. Additionally, SNAPPERGPS has already been deployed for two wildlife tracking studies on sea turtles and sea birds.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Computer Science & Informatics
Publisher:	Western University
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	4 February 2025
Last Modified:	04 Feb 2025 12:11
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/173417

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